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David Porter » Entries tagged with "movies"

Movies Echo Life’s Fantastic, Weird, Unusual and Bizarre Deaths

Many people lead unusual lives; some end in the strangest, almost unbelievable deaths. Hollywood loves them all: the odder, the better to feed new material. As art often imitates life, people who’ve died from unusual diseases, accidents (boats, cars, planes, trains, industrial machinery), wars, disasters, murders, suicides, executions and quirks of fate are source material to film-makers. People rubberneck motorway accidents and flock to see where celebrities like Princess Diana or Elvis Presley died, as death is compelling on film or in situ. People In Extraordinary Departures Folklore claims in 401 BC, a soldier condemned for murder survived 17 days of scaphism (penned in a trough, head and limbs coated with honey, left to death by insects); and in 207 BC, Greek philosopher, Chrysippus is believed to have died of laughter watching his … Read entire article »

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The Arts, Science and Technology Fuse Together for Mutual Benefit

Normally thought to co-exist in splendid isolation, science and the arts can work with technology in perfect harmony to push artistic boundaries. The arts have always been at the forefront of technological and scientific advances, from the latest in cave paints to computerised/digital film making/theatrical effects that cause some to wonder if real human actors will be needed at all in the future. Technology in the Arts explores the intersection between arts management and on-line technology. Many universities run joint department programs, conscious of the synergy between arts & sciences. When Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact There is a growing genre of stories and movies that started out as far-fetched ideas, but gradually found reality as science advanced. HG Wells’ 1898 story War of the Worlds doesn’t seem impossible today. While life may … Read entire article »

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Bob Dylan and The Movies: His Songs and His Acting

Poet, singer, songwriter, musician, painter, actor: there is no limit to what Bob Dylan brings to the world through his creativity and originality. Bob Dylan is no stranger to screen, whether concert recordings or documentaries. He has helped make and participated in movies, using his music and his many-times reinvented persona. Documentaries About the Man According to Internet Movie Database (IMDb), D A Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967), famous for opening with Subterranean Homesick Blues word cards, was a portrait of the artist as a young man, following Dylan round a three week British tour two years earlier. Among others, Joan Baez and British troubadour Donovan are featured. IMDb also rate Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) as a portrait of an artist as a young man. Using interviews cut with archival … Read entire article »

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Violence Makes Interesting Drama, But Is It Harmful Influence?

Many people find violent theatre, games & films entertaining, but they are also social reflections and present potential danger to the susceptible. The notion that stage, TV, film or game violence desensitizes, is hardly new, but is given a fresh airing when shocking pictures of war, disaster and accident are streamed straight to screens. Sometimes people walk by; some help. Rubberneckers slowing to look at carnage on motorway/freeway pile-ups, are a danger to others. Bloodbaths and Atrocities on Stage Violence and theatre have always been partners. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is described by Sparknotes as “nonstop bloodbath of abomination with 14 killings, 9 on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or possibly 3), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism. That’s 5.2 atrocities per act, one every 97 lines”. Sarah Kane’s … Read entire article »

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Hit Popular Songs Worth Their Weight in Gold in Successful Movies

Many song hits aren’t written specifically for cinema soundtracks, but songs and their writers get a new lease of life from being part of a profitable film. Music/song reinforces movie action, stokes emotion, heightens terror. Popular songs increase chances of a hit movie, especially if soundtracks are released. Dirty Dancing (1987) soundtrack success surprised the record company, but “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” recorded by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes wasn’t a hit before the film. Most film-hits, though, are already song-hits. Most Popular Artistes Some artists see several songs featured in favourite lists. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” shot to Billboard Number 2 twenty years after release: it was in Wayne’s World (1992). Their “Don’t Stop Me Now” (1978) played in British horror comedy … Read entire article »

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Post-Apocalyptic Movies: Not Quite the End of the World

Are people attracted to doom-filled, survivor tales because they offer hope, or because they make real everybody’s deepest fears of an unknown future? Movie observers assume people’s fascination with post-apocalyptic horror stories began after World War 2, when the nuclear arms race heated up and global war, or MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) seemed inevitable. More recently, man’s environmental destruction unleashes apocalypse. Others point to Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie classic Metropolis showing social crisis between workers and owners. However, it began a century earlier in 1826 when Mary Shelley (who also wrote Frankenstein) published The Last Man, set in a future world devastated by plague. Dystopian Movies Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. Life is rendered harsh for many for the benefit of the few. Regimes … Read entire article »

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Movie Remakes Are the Golden Goose of the Entertainment Industry

One idea for a single film is a waste. Updating it can be a box-office winner, especially using the latest top stars. In a few years they can do it again. No slouches at reusing old ideas and films about films, showbusiness in general and Hollywood in particular, has created a genre: remaking old movies for a second outing, often with spectacular success. The Prisoner Made for television, The Prisoner was a 1960s cult series starring and partly written by Patrick McGoohan, at that time Britain’s highest paid TV-actor. The prisoner is perhaps a spy, who after resigning is kidnapped and taken to The Village, a mysterious place (actually Portmeiron, an eccentric Welsh Italianate place), where he wakes to find everyone’s names replaced … Read entire article »

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Aliens and Strange Creatures in Movies, Songs and Literature

Nobody knows what extra-terrestrials from other planets look like, but the earthly creative arts world is happy to speculate wildly and profitably. On April Fools Day 2010, a Jordanian newspaper, Al Ghad, carried a front page story of 10-foot aliens from a flying saucer landing near the desert town of Jafr. The Mayor sent out security services. It was a deliberate hoax from enterprising journalists. The War of the Worlds 1938 incident was unplanned, but had a similar effect. It was broadcast on CBS radio on 30 October as a Halloween episode of Theatre-of-the-Air, adapted from the HG Wells’ 1898 novel, War of the Worlds, directed and narrated by Orson Welles. This kick-started his career. It ran without commercial breaks, opening with simulated live news reports, leading listeners to believe an alien invasion … Read entire article »

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Will Technology Kill Off the Actor?

Simulation Wizardry Could Replace Human Beings in Movies As movie-3D on the back of other recent and ongoing technological advances sweeps all before it, are human performers’ days numbered, or is a human actor irreplaceable? Film-goers expect to enjoy realistic and convincing settings in movies, from wild places to dingy tenements, from outer space to city skylines. all usually real, un-enhanced backdrops. Audiences have grown up with seeing how people interact with and respond to their situations/environments. The image of the terrified victim in a horror setting, paralysed by fear, the rabbit in the headlights, is not only an abiding memory of virtually everything ever made in the genre, but is what drives horror itself. Whether the unspeakable is a creature (Jaws, King Kong), a natural threat (Tornado, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) … Read entire article »

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